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What are you currently playing?; What video game are you playing right now?
Topic Started: Dec 11 2013, 10:14 AM (143,491 Views)
Red Panda
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Jerbs and Groathe
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FFXII is a game that got alot more appreciation over time. It's the game I tell people that havent played a FF game due to the nature of turn based combat or just the general foreign and flamboyant aesthetic to try this one. The story is a little disjointed but the Ivalice setting and all the flavour text that give some worldbuilding was quite cool. Kinda wished they'd set more games in Ivalice.

There's a HD version coming out with the updated Zodiac Job System. It gives better diversity to characters as the original game had a single license board that homogenized roles and lead people into blind directions.



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Moo
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Yeah that bugs me a bit. Aside from some minor differences with each character's initial licenses it's all looked the same to me. It gives you a lot of freedom over builds without warning you about it, so you could easily screw yourself over by beefing everyone up with handaxes and then getting pummelled by flying enemies. The blindness is puzzling too: currently I'm just following the vague trends on the board, like the magic trend that appears to be on the upper left of the top section. But then I've also seen some magic appearing on the lower right of the top section. It's weird. I'm going for a general balance of three mage girls and three buff dudes, but with varying weapons and some overlap (Basch is my axe-wielding beefcake). It's just a coincidence that it ended up on gender lines.

I can see 12 being the most accessible, though I think 9's aesthetic is very inviting to Western audiences. It's Disney-like.
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Red Panda
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Jerbs and Groathe
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What I did was use a character I wasn't going to use (Penelo) to scout out the license board along cheap board options to see which direction I wanted my main party members to head in.

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Doomguy
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Moo
Jul 15 2016, 11:42 PM
I don't get why you'd care about gems if the genre doesn't interest you. Unless you mean it's hard to figure out which ones you might enjoy because the definition of "good" for fans and reviewers isn't your definition of good, which I understand.

Do yourself a fave and play Paper Mario 2. It's the most accessible gem I can think of.
Well the genre does interest me, it's just the "You're planted in place with no movement ability at all, now take turns hitting each other!" combat style that I don't like. I played about 80% through Chrono Trigger before dropping it due to that reason, but I liked basically everything else about it.
Edited by Doomguy, Jul 16 2016, 11:43 AM.
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Moo
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Red Panda
Jul 16 2016, 09:07 AM
What I did was use a character I wasn't going to use (Penelo) to scout out the license board along cheap board options to see which direction I wanted my main party members to head in.

Penelo's the only one I haven't utilized yet. It's because once I got her I didn't have money to equip her with decent stuff and the other characters quickly levelled above her to a point where it wasn't practical to use her. So I would try what you did but I gave her the first quickening, so I'll try to utilize her eventually.
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Doomguy
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Doom gush #8362

Put together a performance video (which I guess also doubles as a gameplay video). I think this is legit the best optimised game I've played when it was new in the 5 and a bit years I've been on PC.

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Twisted
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Liked, and subscribed
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Doomguy
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wew, I'll be pewdiepie before I know it at this rate.
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Moo
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Haha it's crazy how much of FFXII I've forgotten. I put 30 hours into it a few years back but beyond the first few hours everything is completely new, like the Ozmone Plain and everything beyond is completely washed from my memory. Also the story is much more straightforward than it seemed to me when I was playing drunk. It's also clearly the best story in the series. Not a single line like "Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality." That's not from FF but it has the same stuff.

I'm actually enjoying the gameplay more than Xenoblade. Xenoblade at peak intensity is unparalleled in RPGs I've played, but when you're adventuring the battles can get boring. I can't explain why, but FFXII's adventuring is fun. I don't know why: there's more micromanaging (health and status effects post-battle) and, because of gambits, less player input in easier fights. Maybe it's just "the flow" or the little shot of dopamine I get when I level up, but I've spent hours of time completing hunts and battling everything I come across. I was relieved sometimes in Xenoblade when I'd reach a cutscene indicating the slog was over; in FFXII the cutscenes have farted on my enjoyment.

Thing I like:
- Money is pretty scarce and you have to really think about what to buy with it. I've focused on offense and I'm paying dearly in defense. Despite my focus, a couple characters have the same weapons they had early in the game while others are stuck with hand-me-downs. Unless you grind like crazy, you're subsisting. Stealing loot from enemies to sell has never felt more important.

Thing I don't like:
- Magic spells eat through MP like a motherfucker! I only use offensive magic when I have to because it's such a waste. You'd need a lot of upgrades to have a character with magic-only offense.

Thing I'm conflicted about:
- The license board's hidden upgrades are a bother, especially if you've just bought Vaan a wicked cool katana and have to hunt for it on the board and then reload an old save. But it's fun on the 'abilities' side of the board revealing new stuff.
Edited by Moo, Jul 19 2016, 11:56 AM.
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jamesh
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I've been playing through Life is Strange, and enjoying it. The start of episode 4 was emotionally draining. I'm interested to see how it ends now.
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Red Panda
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Jerbs and Groathe
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Moo
Jul 19 2016, 11:34 AM
Haha it's crazy how much of FFXII I've forgotten. I put 30 hours into it a few years back but beyond the first few hours everything is completely new, like the Ozmone Plain and everything beyond is completely washed from my memory. Also the story is much more straightforward than it seemed to me when I was playing drunk. It's also clearly the best story in the series. Not a single line like "Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality." That's not from FF but it has the same stuff.

I'm actually enjoying the gameplay more than Xenoblade. Xenoblade at peak intensity is unparalleled in RPGs I've played, but when you're adventuring the battles can get boring. I can't explain why, but FFXII's adventuring is fun. I don't know why: there's more micromanaging (health and status effects post-battle) and, because of gambits, less player input in easier fights. Maybe it's just "the flow" or the little shot of dopamine I get when I level up, but I've spent hours of time completing hunts and battling everything I come across. I was relieved sometimes in Xenoblade when I'd reach a cutscene indicating the slog was over; in FFXII the cutscenes have farted on my enjoyment.
I felt that the story of FFXII had alot more interesting things going on within the background political fantasy of the Arcadian Empire. It was better than what was actually happening within your party. It picks up about half way through when Princess Leia Ashe starts to take more of a role as the protagonist.

FFXII is better balanced around point to point objectives where characters are good to go with how they progress evenly, where Xenoblade expects you to do some fair bit of questing.

You might be surprised at how good the optional bosses are in XII. I liked them better than what Xenoblade offered. I still prefer how mobile and active Xenoblade: Chronicles' combat feels over FFXII's more stiff and stilted system. I do like the party control that XII had and the gambits added a nice strategic layer of planning out to create a functional party composition, but as much as I liked the streamlining of some of the busywork, FFXII can often feel like you're in auto-pilot and just going through the motions.

Also, the IZJS version that's being remastered balanced magic lol.
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Moo
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I don't know the plot of Star Wars so this is all fresh for me. I agree that the Archadean (?) politics are the highlight. The story is good at establishing credible motives for each party member's part in the quest and not wasting time on frivolous emotional dilemmas.

I like gambits, except when they impede on my plans at the worst of times (like when I'm about to do a 3-way quickening and someone lowers their MP by casting protect on themselves). It's a shame the magic isn't balanced. I assume you mean it's imbalanced against your favour, because I've been seeking out licenses to reduce MP usage but still can't meaningfully use offensive magic.

Edit: For a game that isn't light on tutorials ("Use the control stick to move. Try this now.") it doesn't explain how quickenings work. I believe what I'm supposed to do is choose Mist Charges whenever they're available and shuffle when necessary to maximize the amount of hits. The most hits I've managed is 7. One tactic I've come up with for leveling up lower-level characters is having a gang of high-level enemies chase them around until they're in a big pack and then destroying them all at once with a quickening.
Edited by Moo, Jul 21 2016, 03:17 PM.
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Red Panda
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Jerbs and Groathe
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Mist = Force
Bjugerba = Cloud City
Princess Ashe = Princess Leia
Ba'gamnan = Boba Fett
Balthier & Fran = Han Solo & Chewbacca
Strahl = Millenium Falcon
Judge Gabranth = Darth Vader
Bahamut = Death Star

It puts its own spins on it, but It's still kinda funny how similar it is.
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Offensive magic ends up being capped, so increasing the stat/potency doesnt make high end MP eating Magic like Flare and Holy to be all that worthwhile, when you can just save your MP reserves for quickenings because they're so much of an I win button in the original version. The IZJS just changes the license board by splitting it up into sets that are specific to a class to make it work more like a 'tech tree'. It uncaps magic and adds more in the way of magic lore that's exclusive to certain classes and it tweaks Quickenings to compensate.
Edited by Red Panda, Jul 25 2016, 06:39 PM.
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Moo
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I've figured out quickenings since. If you start with three characters and rotate the remaining three one by one you can end up doing massive damage. I've beaten some hunts with quickenings that I couldn't have managed without them. I noticed that they double and eventually triple a character's MP, which I don't think the game pointed out. Offense magic is at least viable now, but I still rarely use it. I finally found some elemental vulnerability gambits, so I might set those up.

I'm trying to keep every character appropriately leveled since reserves are useful in boss fights, but it's hard. Ashe and Penelo are about 8 levels below the next lowest party member.

I'm around the 40 hour mark and just about to enter Old Archades. This game is long.
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jamesh
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I've been playing Batman: Arkham Knight over the last week and a bit. For the most part, it's a nice evolution of what they did in Arkham City. There are a few things that have been pissing me off though:

1. the tank battles get a bit tedious after a while. The stealth missions against the cobra tanks even more so.

2. the default controls for the batmobile: in particular, the decision to use the left trigger as a context switch to battle mode. I lost count of the number of times I'd want to slow down to take a corner and suddenly lose all momentum as I switched to battle mode and the batmobile started strafing rather than turning. I'm really puzzled why the alternative control scheme wasn't the default: as well as having more standard driving controls, you don't have to constantly hold a trigger down while in battle mode.

3. the fact that two of the gadgets you need to either access certain areas or defeat certain enemy types are just sitting around for you to pick up at any time rather than making them obvious to you. I got really frustrated in one combat section where I'd knocked everyone out except for this brute with electric gauntlets where nothing I did would hurt him. I ended up looking it up online where other people had run into the same issue and the solution was to use the remote electric charge gadget. I then looked up how to get the REC, and it turns out I could have picked it up right at the start.

I will say that it is a very nice looking game though. I especially like the Adam West bat suit: the fabric has just the right sheen, and the painted on eyebrows look ridiculous next to all the other art in the game.
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